<p>-Total 2501 degrees awarded to 2289 students</p><p>-378 PhD degrees awarded</p><p>The 59th convocation of IIT Bombay was held today online in Mixed Reality mode, keeping in view the safety measures during the ongoing pandemic.</p><p>The Institute thought it best to arrange such a VR-convocation for the graduating students as we did not wish to put their health at risk but at the same time, we did not wish to deprive them of the sense of achievement and pride of passing out of India’s premier engineering Institute. The personalized avatar of each graduate received the degree certificate from the personalized avatar of the Director Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri. All medal winners received their medals from the personalized avatar of the Chief Guest Prof. Geoffrey Hinton, FRS, University of Toronto.</p><p>The event was screened on Institute’s official Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/IITBombayOfficialChannel.</p><p>The convocation is normally a chance for students to socialize with their friends and faculty one last time before they embark on their next journey. Like last year, the institute provided an opportunity to students to do so via virtual presence, allowing students to roam around a virtual campus, visit their hostels and departments virtually, and bump into/ meet their friends and faculty. In addition, certain components of the convocation showcased a few graduates being actually present in the scene.</p><p>Prof. Geoffrey Hinton, often hailed as the father of artificial neural networks, is currently an Emeritus Professor at University of Toronto, the Chief Scientific Advisor of the Vector Institute and a Vice-President and Engineering Fellow at Google. He has also served as a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and University College of London. Prof. Hinton has a BA in Experimental Psychology from Cambridge University and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. He is known for his seminal research contributions in areas such as the backpropagation algorithm, Boltzmann machines, time delay networks, variational learning, and capsule networks. Prof. Hinton was elected as the Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1998, and a Member of National Academy of Engineering, USA in 2016. In 2018 he received Canada's highest civilian award 'Companion of the Order of Canada'. He has received several major awards with the topmost honour being the Turing Award in 2018. Prof. Hinton received Honorary Doctorate degrees from University of Sherbrooke, University of Edinburgh and University of Sussex.</p><p>Presenting the Institute’s Report for the year 2020-21, Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director of IIT Bombay informed that IIT Bombay continues to be a much sought-after destination for UG and PG studies. Prof. Subhasis Chaudhari said, “"We are happy to note that despite the pandemic, our students did not have to suffer academically. The training that our students received will definitely see them taking up leadership roles, as always, in academic and corporate world, thus contributing to the needs of our country".</p><p>Chief Guest Prof. Geoffrey Hinton, FRS, in his speech said, “I would like to congratulate the students who had difficulties with their studies but persevered and overcame them. Perseverance is an admirable quality and in the long run, it is much more important than just raw talent. To be a good researcher, he/she need a lot of perseverance because most new ideas turn out to be wrong and it generally takes a lot of commitment and hard work to discover why they are wrong.”</p><p>“I believe that the rapid progress of AI is going to transform society in ways we do not fully understand and not all of the effects are going to be good. I hope that many of the graduating students will choose to be part of the coming revolution in medicine that combines exciting new technology with helping fellow human beings. I hope that this graduating class will use their talent and education for the good of humanity and will never put political expediency above the search for truth”,&nbsp; he added.</p><p>At the 59th Convocation, a total of 2501 degrees will be awarded. These include 178 PhD, 36 (MTech/ MPhil+PhD), 26 Dual Degree (MSc+PhD), 8 MS (by research), 689 MTech, 63 MDes, 18 Dual Degree (BDes+MDes), 13 MPhil, 109 MBA, 1 EMBA, 7 MPP, 235 two-year MSc, 324 Dual Degree (BTech+MTech), 663 BTech Degrees, 12 Interdisciplinary Dual Degrees (BTech/ BS+MTech/ MSc), 8 Dual Degrees (BS+MSc), 49 BS, 14 BDes, and 20 PDGIIT. I am glad to announce that this year, we will be granting 28 joint PhD’s along with Monash University. Prof. Margaret Gardner, President and the Vice-Chancellor of Monash University is here to confer the degrees in person.</p><p>This year, 38 research scholars have been selected for the award of ‘Naik and Rastogi Award for Excellence in PhD Research’ for the year 2019-21.</p><p>This year, three students were presented the Gold medals for their exemplary performance. The ‘President of India Medal’ was bestowed on Siddharth Chandak, a (BTech) student from the Department of Electrical Engineering. The ‘Institute Gold Medal (2019-20)’ and the ‘Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal’ was awarded to Manu Srivastava, a student from the Department of Physics. Additionally, departmental toppers were presented with silver medals by the chief guest. Prof. Margaret Gardner, President and Vice-Chancellor, Monash University, Australia, members of Board of Governors and several other distinguished guests from India and abroad attended the Convocation function online, besides the graduating students and their parents.</p>